Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
player can perform an action, players immediately understand that they can use it to
explore the screen. In Thief: Deadly Shadows, the gamepad controls did very different
things when the player was shooting an arrow or picking a lock. The very first tutorial
mission exposed these differences with specific tasks the player had to complete during
the tutorial mission, and the screens were very different for both modes. On Mushroom
Men: The Spore Wars for the Wii, the changing icon told the player what special power
was possible on any object being pointed to by the Wii Remote.
Players won
t know about it.
A great term in games is
“
discoverability.
”
It describes how easy it is for a player to figure things out on his
own. Power-user moves are sometimes hidden on purpose, such as a special button
combo in a fighting game, and that
'
t use it if they don
'
s a fine thing to hide. A special shortcut to page
through equipped weapons is different
'
—
it is something that more advanced players
will use to shorten the time between their desire to do something and having it actu-
ally happening. Make sure that you expose anything like this in a tutorial or in hints
during loading screens. Documenting it isn
'
t good enough since players almost never
read documentation.
Watch and learn.
When you finish any work on any kind of interface, bring some
people in and watch them try to use it. Stand behind them and give them a task to
perform, but don
'
t give them any hints. An interface should be self evident to players,
and they should be able to figure it out in 30 seconds or less on their own. A really
good tip: Watch what your impromptu testers do first, and most likely they
ll all do
something similar. If they struggle with your solution, consider carefully whether you
should consider changing your design.
Avoid pixel perfect accuracy.
It
'
s a serious mistake to assume that players of all ages
can target a screen area with pixel perfect accuracy. Even with a high-fidelity control
like a mouse, this task is very difficult; on a very low-fidelity control like the Wii
Remote or pad touch controls, this is simply impossible. An example of this might
be a small click target on an item or a small drop point on the screen. High require-
ments for accuracy can create tons of player frustration, even with a high-fidelity
input device like a mouse. Instead, consider creating a sloppy buffer zone that effec-
tively widens the active target area. On Thief: Deadly Shadows, these
“
sloppy
”
target-
ing areas would sometimes overlap on-screen, and the code had to choose which
item was the most likely one targeted. The solution was to choose the closest one to
the viewer, but that doesn
'
t necessarily work all the time.
Anyone who has attempted to cast spells in the original version of Ultima VIII will
agree. The reagents that made some of the spells work had to be placed exactly. This
requirement made spell casting frustrating and arbitrary. Even though the QA
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